Earthquakes, Thunderbolts, Fires, Fathers

地震雷火事親父 (jishin kaminari kaji oyaji): earthquakes, thunder, fires, fathers. A list of the fearsome things of this world, read downward from the earthquake, with the father as the comic surprise after three disasters, rhymed to 火事. It is Edo popular speech, in print by 1814 and a children's chant by 1831, and behind it stands a run of three sudden things, in a samurai maxim and in a farewell verse of 1728 whose author died two days after writing it. A novelist of 1933 added war as a fifth. The story that 親父 was once ōyamaji, a great wind, is a modern guess with no witness.